


The Hound and the Fox

by elentari7



Category: Original Work
Genre: Also lesbians, Also not a detective, Detective Noir, F/F, Folklore, Gen, Lesbians of color, Magic, Mostly just grumpy, My detective is not that brooding really, Mythology References, She wants you to know that, Urban Fantasy, and snark, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26995744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elentari7/pseuds/elentari7
Summary: Mar is not a detective. She just has a knack for finding things.And a small, unremarkable life she's perfectly happy with, thanks very much.And a nosy neighbor.And a beautiful woman following her around asking for help.And the ability to say no.That last one's mostly theoretical.
Relationships: does this count as a relationship or is it just one person flirting and one person sulking
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	The Hound and the Fox

**Author's Note:**

> CWs: Assault, (temporary) memory loss. (If it needs other warnings please lmk and I will add them!)

The stranger walked in and headed directly, if leisurely, for the counter in the back, where Mar should have been able to--and usually did--pass the whole day without having to interact with anyone. This was about eleven a.m.

She wasn't ostentatious about it, but she was definitely looking around as she went and evaluating everything she saw. She moved like she owned it all, or would soon. She looked less like she wanted to make people take her seriously and more like she assumed she already had their attention.

She was completely out of place in the shop, and Mar wanted her out.

Of course she was coming right to Mar, so it was time to put on the customer service face and help a lady out. With any luck she'd be out of here in a couple of minutes. Mar’s customer service face was effective that way.

She waited until the woman was right in front of the counter and definitely waiting to talk to her before putting down her phone. “Morning. Can I help you with anything?”

The woman studied Mar briefly. Mar pushed back stray hanks of hair behind her ears, and immediately felt irritated at herself for it. The stranger didn’t have a single dark, tightly coiled hair out of place.

“I’ve been referred to you to help me solve a problem,” the stranger said. “A bit of a mystery problem, in that the usual methods aren’t having any luck with it.”

“Ma’am, you’re in the wrong place. We sell electronics parts.”

“The place is incidental. I’m looking for you, Ms. Crowley.”

The customer service face slipped a notch. “...I don’t take kindly to being stalked by strangers.”

“Poorly worded, sorry. As I said before, I’m looking for your _help_. I would of course compensate you for it.”

Mar stared at her, hard. Not one outward sign of anything unusual about her, unless you counted the sheer out-of-placeness--the movie-star smoothness of her dark brown skin, the authority draped about her as artfully as her clothes, which draped pretty nicely, sue a girl for noticing. And not one mention of what exactly was going on. She clearly knew more than she was saying, acting like they were part of some secret society--the type with robes and elitism and shit--and that was decidedly not the way to Mar’s heart. “Unless you want to pay me for a phone battery, ma’am, I haven’t got help to give.”

The stranger just gave her a shrewd look. “You haven’t even heard what I need help with yet.”

“Solving a problem,” Mar quoted, adding, with a demonstrative sweep of her arm, “which isn’t so much our wheelhouse here, nor mine in particular. You’ll probably want to hire a professional of some kind.” She checked that her customer service face was firmly back in place, and added the smile that usually sent people on their way. “Have a nice day.”

She turned back to her phone. None of the apps were open, but she swiped meaningfully anyway.

The stranger took the hint but didn’t give up immediately. Points for persistence. She palmed a clip from somewhere, slipped a little card out of it, and held the card out over the counter. “Think about it, let me know?”

Mar nodded, eyes still on her phone, and swept the card into the nearest trash can.

The bell above the door jangled behind the stranger on her way out.

***

The next day Mar came back from her lunch break to find another business card on the counter. _Lia Allister_ , _developmental consultant_. Handwritten: _Please do think about it_. She trashed it, too. And then she was paranoid the whole way home.

***

Two days after that was grocery day, or at least the day Mar ran out of leftovers to make into fried rice, which meant being a little late getting home. Nothing out of the ordinary. She had just dumped her groceries on the hall floor to dig out her keys when her neighbor’s door creaked open behind her. She turned around and was vindicated in her paranoia.

It’d been a long stultifying day. She’d had fried rice for the eleventh meal in a row. The most she could be bothered to summon for Lia Allister, developmental consultant, was a flat stare. “Fucking really?”

“Mrs. Ciszek was just telling me about how you fixed her sink drain,” Allister said by way of response. “She was nice enough to let me loiter in her air conditioning, though I think she was mostly suspicious about me loitering in the hallway. She’s been very nice about asking what I’m doing here, too.”

“Such good instincts, gone so wrong,” Mar muttered, shouldering her way into the apartment with groceries in her arms. Save her from nosy old white ladies.

“May I?” Allister didn’t move from where she stood. “I promise I’m not going to do anything untoward.”

Mar looked back at her. Mrs. Ciszek’s door was still cracked open, and Mrs. Ciszek was probably right behind it, waiting to do something stupid and gallant if Mar’s “guest” turned out to be unwelcome. Inviting a stranger you were actively suspicious of into your home for interrogation, _honestly_. Was the woman _that_ determined to compensate her for the sink drain thing?

“You might as well,” she grunted, and turned her back. 

Allister strolled in the door behind her. “Could you have opened that without the key? Out of curiosity.”

Mar ignored her. 

“Or does one have to specialize? I suppose opening as a category could be fairly broad or very narrow, couldn’t it.”

Mar shoved the celery into the fridge drawer, slamming the drawer a bit when it stuck in the usual place. “Fucking _specialize_ ,” she snorted.

“I was told you had a particular knack for finding things.”

At that she looked up. “By who.”

“No one specific individual,” Allister hedged.

Was there no such thing as basic privacy? “And you believe this unspecified group, huh?”

She was not to be deterred. “It’s why I sought you out. There’s a certain lost item that needs--”

“Not a detective.”

“You should consider it. There aren’t any investigators in town who’ll so much as consider the existence of the supernatural, I’ve looked.”

“Of course there aren’t. Magic doesn’t pay the bills.”

Allister looked around at the apartment. “Ah,” she said delicately.

“Not to dash the dreams of the general population, but it’s not actually great for solving problems,” Mar continued. “Especially the money kind. You don’t get to that level without some blood sacrifice, and that opens up its whole own set of problems. Cult robes just aren’t flattering.”

“So you do have a sense of humor.” Aggravatingly, Lia Allister was smiling at her. Not Mar’s preferred reaction to weapons-grade sarcasm.

“How is that relevant.”

“I’d begun to think you didn’t know what humor _was_.”

Mar did _not_ slam the fridge door, it just always needed a little extra oomph to stay shut. “What exactly is humorous about this situation? Ms. Allister.”

The smile dropped away, and Allister inclined her head. “Nothing, you’re right. I’m sorry to pester you. The situation I’ve come to see you about _is_ serious.” She looked Mar in the eye steadily, with just the right touch of vulnerability. “Will you let me explain it?”

Mar crossed her arms. “Depends. Are you _deliberately_ trying to femme-fatale your way into my life?”

The woman gaped at her in a rather satisfying way. “...What? I--”

“Because you might be used to getting your way, but you’re not subtle about it. I let you into my _home_ to keep my neighbor from doing anything stupid, not because I give a shit about you or your new obsession with magic or your little problem that I can totally solve--”

“I’m trying to help someone!” she snapped. “Hear me the fuck out!”

The crack of genuine emotion threw Mar; Lia Allister did not come across as a person who ever got properly pissed off. Mar considered her, warily. “Why?”

“Basic human decency?” she growled.

Mar stared at the woman who had stalked her. Allister visibly gathered herself. 

“I will apologize for being disruptive as many times as you want if you help her.”

_Disruptive_ was a tactful way of putting it. But the thread of anger was still there in Allister’s voice, and it was pulling at Mar in spite of herself. The determination that something really was wrong. And that she’d be a dick not to find out what it was before saying she couldn’t do anything about it. 

Stuff like this was how she ended up fixing Mrs. Ciszek’s stupid sink drain.

“Who’s ‘her’?”

***

According to the police, she was a 5’6” woman of East Asian descent between the ages of twenty and thirty, and the victim of a mugging that ended in jewel theft--pearls, it sounded like, though it was difficult to get a straight answer out of her under the circumstances--and of retrograde amnesia, possibly linked to head trauma. She was as yet unidentified, not having had any ID on her at the time of the incident.

According to the victim herself, she’d been robbed of something precious that she couldn’t specifically identify. No one was more frustrated than she; and one couldn’t blame her for her frustration. She couldn’t even recall her own name.

According to the lone witness, she had been pushed against a wall and choked by an armed male assailant until she coughed something up--presumably the precious pearl-like something--which glowed brightly as a perfect drop of moonlight when the assailant reached in and grabbed it out of the victim’s mouth. The witness had understandably frozen up in disbelief. But then the victim had collapsed, and she had run forward yelling, startling the mugger--

“You _what_ ?” Mar interrupted. “Were you _trying_ to get stabbed?”

“Obviously not,” Allister said, annoyed. “And he had a gun, not a knife.”

“...How is that better?”

“He ran off and didn’t shoot anyone,” she said impatiently, “so it ended fine. Except for her. She’s disoriented and alone and even if she had people--which she doesn’t think she does--no one can find them because no one can figure out who she is. The only thing she had on her was a metro card. So she’s stuck indefinitely.”

“If she doesn’t know who she is, how does she know she doesn’t have people?” Mar pointed out.

“She doesn’t.” Allister’s brow wrinkled. “It’s...she knows she _should_ know, but she can’t find the information. No matter how hard she looks. I’m not explaining this right.”

She definitely wasn’t giving a full picture. “How did you decide this was magic and not brain damage? I assume nobody believed you saw a guy pull her glowing soul out of her mouth or whatever.”

“No, but I didn’t expect them to.” She tilted her head in curiosity. It was an irritatingly graceful gesture. “Is that what you think it is?”

“God, no. Souls are above my paygrade. Anybody’s paygrade.” Mar threw her hands up at the continued curious-bird impression. “Magic and religion aren’t the same thing, you know. Supernatural people can’t know better than anyone else if souls even exist. Though, I dunno, maybe she believes that’s what it was.” She realized she was gesticulating, and folded her arms again, more tightly. “Which doesn’t mean it was actually magic. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

Allister’s voice was quiet and immovable. “I know what I saw.” 

Mar raised her eyebrows at her. “You know they say eyewitness testimony is super unreliable, right?”

She shrugged. “I’m not in the habit of doubting myself.”

“You shock me.”

“And according to the doctors she hasn’t actually got any trauma to the brain that would cause amnesia. _And_ I’ve talked to her more than anyone, doctors included. She hasn’t said anything about souls or faith or--but she’s sure--” Allister shook her head “If you met her, you’d get it.”

Mar was beginning to be afraid of that. “How did _you_ get it? You don’t know anything about magic. Most people don’t assume that’s what’s going on.”

“I followed the trail.” Mar gave her a look of flat disbelief, and got a wry smile in return. “I mean, I spent most of the past month wondering if I was losing my mind. But gravitating toward the people who would rather put me off than sell me something did the trick eventually.”

She took in that impeccable guarded smile. She wasn’t getting any more information about her sources out of this woman. “Pestering people who put you off is just your M.O., then.”

“And you haven’t denied a single thing I’ve said about either magic or your specific knack, so either you and your whole community are delusional or I’m onto something.” Mar cursed internally. “Either way, searching by magic can’t be any less productive than searching any other way has been.”

Under her expectant eyes, Mar felt suddenly trapped on the little patch of linoleum that was her kitchen. She wouldn’t be able to leave it without either caving in to Her Highness, or blowing off a stranded woman who had lost, from the sound of it, everything.

She made eye contact with the woman standing in her excuse for a living room. It was probably a mistake. She was so pristine and put-together and determined even in what seemed like desperation that she made Mar’s apartment--hell, her life--look like even more of a disaster just by being in it. “Fine, I’ll meet your friend. See if her issues are actually magic-related.”

Lia Allister smiled the smile of someone who’d gotten exactly what she wanted, but relief bled through in her voice. “Thank you, Ms. Crowley.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get out of my apartment, Ms. Allister.”

“Please,” she said warmly, “call me Lia.”

Mar’s nose wrinkled. “Please don’t call me Ms.”

***

A hallway conversation, or, depending on who you ask, ambush:

“Is that loitering woman gone?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Ciszek, you can stand down. Nothing happened.”

“Oh. She seems like a nice girl.”

“I thought she was _loitering_.”

“Well, she might’ve been out to get you in trouble. Somebody’s fancy lawyer or something. But she said she was looking for your advice. You send her away happy?”

“I sent her away. ...Look, if you think there’s trouble, don’t invite it in next time.”

“I could have called you instead if I had your number.”

“I’m not making it _easier_ for you to nag me about mealtimes.”

“You’ll be a skinny scarecrow forever if you don’t listen to me!”

***

Lia Allister showed up right on time that Saturday afternoon and got them a cab like that was her default mode of transportation, because of course it was. It messed with the casual, dressed-down vibe she seemed to be going for, as did the fact that her jeans alone looked like they cost more than half Mar’s wardrobe. But then, the vibe was probably for her amnesiac friend’s benefit, not Mar’s. 

Maybe for the driver’s benefit, too. She stuck to small talk in the car, all of which Mar was happy to ignore.

Then she had the driver pull over in the middle of a random block, told him breezily to wait there, and got out. Mar blinked at her through the open door. “Sorry, where are we?”

“Come on,” she replied, already walking away.

Mar had the strongest urge to stay put, and possibly slam the cab door. She got out and followed.

“Again,” she said when she caught up, “where are we?”

Lia gestured broadly at the alley in front of them. “The place where she was mugged.”

Mar looked at it, then at her. “Okay…”

Lia looked back, eyebrows raised. “Is there anything you can get from it?”

“It’s an alley.” Mar glanced around again. “It has a dumpster in it.”

“Anything useful.”

“How am I supposed to know? I can’t download info about a crime from the scene. Isn’t this scene a month old, anyway?”

“Closer to two, now.” Lia sighed. “A month ago is when everyone gave up on any useful memories coming back. And even before then, nobody looks for muggers for very long.”

Mar pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what you expected me to do here.”

Lia shrugged, not very apologetically. “I had wondered whether a lost object’s last known location would be helpful in finding it.”

“Not when I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Mar told her flatly, and turned back to the cab.

The rest of the ride to the hospital was silent.

***

“Hello.”

By some unfairly apportioned social grace, Lia managed to make the greeting sound neither condescending in its gentleness nor awkward for the looming absence of any name to add to it. The woman she addressed looked up and smiled back at her. “Lia.”

She looked, sounded, acted perfectly ordinary. Mar did not relax.

“I brought someone with me today,” Lia said, stepping aside to let Mar into the room. Mar stayed put and waved. Lia let out a sharp breath through her nose. “This is Mara Crowley. She has a knack for finding things.”

“Could you stop,” Mar hissed, “spreading that around?”

“Why don’t you come in so we can discuss it privately?” Her voice might have been sugar syrup.

Mar sent the sourest scowl in her arsenal Lia’s way as she obeyed, and took her time shutting the hospital room door. The click was still loud, and the woman Mar was supposed to be helping cut off her small talk with Lia at the sound of it. Mar shifted uncomfortably under her eyes; they were too wary to be really expectant, but she was still feeling the pressure. Nothing close to the pressure on someone stuck in a hospital with no identity, probably. No insurance or home or work prospects or whatever. Lia would probably insist on helping her out if she needed anything, and Lia was hard to resist, but that wasn’t exactly less pressure. _Focus, Crowley._

“You think you can find what I lost?” the woman said steadily. 

Mar cleared her throat. “Not the memories, but. I’m told you also lost an object?” A nod. “So I can maybe work with that. And you think they’re connected.” A glance at Lia, then another nod. “Is there...a reason you think that?”

“I know there is, but I don’t know what it is.” She grimaced, sort of; it was more tired than upset. “I promise, it’s not more annoying for you than it is for me.”

“I assumed.” What on earth was she supposed to do with her hands? Mar shoved them into her pockets before they could fidget any more. “I can’t really do much if I don’t know what it is I’m looking for, so…” She searched for a question that made it sound like she knew what she was doing. Gave up. “Do you mind if I ask you more things a dozen people have probably asked already?”

That earned what looked like a real smirk. “It can’t hurt.”

“Right.” Weirdly, the smirk made Mar feel better. “So, um, what kinds of things _do_ you remember? Like. Obviously you remember how to speak English--assuming you spoke it before--I mean--so is it events you can’t recall? People, places, things?”

She shook her head. “It’s not really like that.”

“Example?”

“I remember my apartment.” Mar could see her eyes unfocus as she visualized it. “The way the light falls in the kitchen in the morning versus the afternoon. But the address, the neighborhood…? It’s like the information was there, but now I only know the gap where it used to be. I remember faces, but not names. Not who they are to me.”

“Your attacker’s face?”

“Yes.”

“Just from the attack, or in any other contexts?”

“All sorts of other contexts,” she sighed. “In different light, with different smells, happy, mad, I just don’t know _why_.”

Mar realized she’d been leaning forward on the balls of her feet, and thumped back onto her heels. “Okay. So we’re dealing with someone who knows you. Friend, SO, ex, coworker, family…” Mystery woman quirked a wry eyebrow at her. “...which isn’t helpful since you don’t remember which it was. Okay.” Mar was really not a detective. Better to just play to her one, single, solitary strength. “You remember the thing that was stolen, too, don’t you.”

“My bead.” Her shoulders hunched a little, which was different. She ducked her head in...embarrassment? Mar knew a sudden desire to punch everyone who’d laughed at that answer in the last two months. “I know there’s more to it. I wish I could tell you what it was.”

“You already told me it can make you forget. If you’re sure that’s what’s happening?” 

She looked up at Mar, a ball of frustration and resignation folded up to fit in an uncomfortable hospital chair. “I’m only sure that it’s part of me. And so is my memory. And they’re both gone.”

That snagged on something in Mar’s brain. “Part of you. Hmmm…”

The woman shrugged. “Ring any bells?”

“Not exactly.” Mar dug out her phone. “But it’s something I can ask the internet.”

“We did try that,” Lia spoke up. Mar had almost managed to ignore Her Highness’ presence until then. Nothing good lasted forever. “Repeatedly.”

“ _You_ don’t always find what you look for.” Mar typed in an overly specific string of search terms that got her no results. “Time to play hot and cold.”

***

It took Mar a bit over half an hour, thousands of jewelry ads, and replacing every single one of her pool of search terms at least twice to narrow things down enough. But it was a way better record than two months, so she would have found Lia’s slight but deepening frown offensive if she gave a damn what she thought. 

(She’d caught the frown out of the corner of her eye sixteen silent minutes in and said, “If you have any better word associations, I’m all ears.” Lia had offered “Steal?” and “Theft?” Which, inconsiderately, had actually been helpful.) 

“Wikipedia?” Lia leaned over her shoulder. “Will that have accurate information on...magic?”

“It has something.” Recognizing the result had thrown her for a bit of a loop, but even without the recognition, she’d have known this was it. Thank you, knack. Mar scrolled without looking, and stopped at what she knew was the right paragraph. “It has that.”

Their--patient? Client?--had stayed so quiet for the last half hour it felt as though she’d left the room, which Mar honestly wouldn’t have blamed her for doing. But now Mar heard her chair creak, felt her lean over Mar’s other shoulder.

“Yeowu guseul,” Mar read, keeping one eye on their mystery woman for a response. “Apparently stores power. Can absorb said power from a human via a kiss.”

The woman frowned. “That seems unethical.”

“It also holds knowledge.” Mar kept reading. “For humans who can get one, at least. But that’s what you’re missing, so…” She handed over her phone so the woman could frown at the screen more conveniently. When she turned around, Lia was studying her. “What?”

“You’re sure, aren’t you?” 

Mar would have come back with something appropriately scathing--why bring in someone whose knack was finding things if you were going to ask second-guessing shit like that?--but she was feeling oddly distracted. It had been ages, that must be it. It had been literal years since this feeling of a search half-finished, when she knew exactly what to look for. Since she’d looked for anything farther away than her keys. Her fingers flexed. Like they could feel out the shape of the empty spaces in the mind of the woman behind her, now, just the way she’d described them. “Yeah.”

Lia finished her assessment with a sharp nod. As if her approval were something Mar’s knack needed right now. She looked up at the woman in question. “I know it’s unlikely, but...does this twig anything?”

The woman stared at the phone screen. No more smirks, or polite patience. There was the barest tremor in her white-knuckled hands. “I should know this.”

“You do know.” Mar found herself crouching in front of her, making eye contact. “You know. He took that from you, but we’ll get it back.”

***

The nearest subway stop on a line that’d take them in vaguely the right direction was a fourteen-minute walk from the hospital. Mar was not about to get on a train going the wrong direction and transfer later, even if it was more convenient; been there, done that, her knack fucking hated it. She would have said those exact words to Lia if she’d asked, but the other woman was so deep in her own thoughts she hardly seemed to notice where they were going.

Mar might have been enjoying being the one leading Lia around by the nose, for a change.

They made it ten minutes before Lia cracked. “Out of curiosity…”

“Here we go,” Mar sighed.

As if she hadn’t said anything: “Was Wikipedia right about anything besides the...fox bead?”

“I mean, it’s a real legend. Not that legends are always super accurate.”

Another few steps of quiet. “Does that make her a legend?”

“It makes her not totally human. Which doesn’t,” Mar added sharply, “make her less real, or anything. She’s just…a kumiho person instead of a human one.” She made the mistake of checking Lia’s reaction, and was met with her curious-bird impression. As if she couldn’t have just read the damn Wikipedia page. “Kumiho. Fox spirit. Or nine-tailed fox, one tail per century, something like that, you’ll have to ask her for details once she remembers them. Usually a beautiful woman. Supposed to kill people and eat their livers to gain power or become human or whatever--”

“ _What_?” Lia stopped walking. Mar didn’t.

“Or hearts, I think it depends on the source,” Mar tossed over her shoulder. Footsteps hurried to catch up with her. She allowed herself to feel smug. “I’ve never met one before, so all I’ve got to go on is folklore, and folklore tends to be bloody. It’s one of the reasons supernatural types are choosy about who they let in on their existence”--this with a pointed sideways look--“people are primed to think of them as monsters. And also to freak out about magic being real, which doesn’t help.” 

Lia nodded along, doing a good impression of a person who _hadn’t_ just freaked out or considered the possibility of her friend being a monster. Always had to look on top of everything, this one. “So she’s...probably not going to kill anyone for their internal organs. If we succeed.”

Mar shrugged. “We’ll have to ask her, once she knows.” At the _look_ Lia leveled at her, she added, “Nicely.”

“ _Ask nicely_.”

“It _is_ a pretty insulting question.” Lia’s expression rearranged itself at the novelty of that perfectly freaking obvious statement. Mar pulled a face back at her. “Look, generally?” She ran a hand through her hair, which fell right back into her face. Typical. “Magic people and non-human people don’t go around killing folks for their organs or their blood or some dark god or whatever. Murderers do.”

“Ah.” A few more steps of blessed silence, before, with a tinge of amusement: “No cult robes, then.”

Mar rolled her eyes so hard she nearly walked into the next lamp post.

***

Two hours, five subway rides, and a whole lot more walking than Mar had been prepared to do today later, Mar’s nerves were beginning to fray. She’d forgotten what a pain this part was--not being able to go the right way because she couldn’t walk through walls. And that was when you just needed to look something up in a library, or whatever. On a citywide scale it was even worse. She couldn’t walk all the way to wherever she was going, but she couldn’t steer the damn trains, either, and progress was so circuitous she couldn’t actually think about it or she’d start climbing the walls. People on the subway had probably seen weirder, but still. 

Lia had definitely noticed, and gotten progressively less subtle about her concern, for about one and a half of those hours. Did Mar know where they were going? “If I did”--she’d be able to ignore her knack’s little freakouts better--“I’d just GoogleMap it.” Lia could get them a cab, and Mar could direct the driver when to turn? “Do you want me directing someone to drive through walls?” Well, what else could Lia do to help? “You could stop _talking_.” 

The last half hour had been very quiet, and the itch to climb the walls had not abated.

Mar thought this was their last stop, though. Coming aboveground felt like a relief this time. “We can walk the rest of the way,” she muttered. 

Lia perked up, then had the courtesy to try to hide it. “Can you tell how far?”

“Not a clue.” Mar surveyed the intersection, turned left. “Just following the feeling. I haven’t got a GPS, here.”

“More like a compass?” Lia said archly. 

At least she seemed aware it wasn’t an original metaphor. Mar put on her perkiest voice, which, she had on good authority, was properly disturbing. “Like a rainbow with a yeowu guseul at the end.”

Lia tilted her head, undisturbed. “Is that an actual phenomenon?”

It took Mar a moment. “What--leprechauns?” She snorted with laughter. “Oh god, can you imagine?” A tinge of terror crept in. “Oh _god_ , can you imagine real fae. As far as I know they’re a matter of belief, thank fuck.”

She caught Lia studying her again, then caught herself smiling. She reeled it in. “What is it this time?”

“How do you know all this?” There was an unfamiliar note in her voice. Maybe the whole might-be-friends-with-a-literal-maneater moment had given her the belated impression that she’d wandered into more than she knew how to handle. “What’s true about...supernatural types and what isn’t.” 

Mar shrugged off the note that suddenly felt pretty darn familiar. She’d take pity on Lia, she decided, and actually thought about it. “...Osmosis, mostly? I guess they don’t want people who know about them to have the wrong idea. I’ve never met a kumiho before, though,” she added, because the surreality of that was still setting in. “I didn’t know about the bead--if I hadn’t been looking for it specifically I could’ve read whole books written about it and not known it was a real thing. It wasn’t in any of mom’s stories.” 

The second the words rolled off her tongue she wanted to bite it in half. Lia had dropped her courtesy to stare for a second in honest surprise. “Your mom told you about supernatural creatures.” 

“The Korean ones.” Mar went to swipe her fingers through her hair again, realized she didn’t want to un-hide her face, and crammed her hands into her pockets. “She didn’t think they were _real_. Fox-wise, she mostly just had _opinions_ about the misogyny of it all.” 

“I see.” Lia had gotten her surprise under control, but not her urge to ask questions. Mar could just feel it. 

“She also obviously left out some details,” she grumbled before that could happen. “Never told me the one about swallowing a yeowu guseul for knowledge of heaven and earth, which, dick move, and also gross, but would have been useful to know before I had to sift through the entire internet. The usual kind of thing is...scary female agency, and all. Clever independent women not to be trusted. Tricking your way into someone’s confidence to kill them. Possibly after killing all the livestock first. Hence the misogyny opinions…‘fox’ is an insult, you know. In Korean.”

Shockingly, Lia let it go. “I think I see what you meant about folklore,” she said after a moment, instead of anything more interrogative. Mar almost let her shoulders relax before seeing the innocent smile. “So if you were to categorize supernatural people, or would it be species? by likelihood of existence, with Have Personally Met at one end of the scale and Fae at the other--”

Mar still could not believe, nearly an hour and at least a couple miles later, that she’d walked into that. Much less that she was still _talking_ about it. Not that she had actually given Lia an answer, because unlike some she understood the concept of privacy, but that scale was ridiculous, and if Lia was going to keep attempting to interrogate her, she was going to get an earful about how wrong her method was. For fuck’s sake, now the woman was asking about gods just to piss Mar off. 

“We have _absolutely had_ the magic-is-not-religion conversation,” Mar was saying, “don’t tell me you don’t remember, your poker face isn’t that good--”

“Yes it is,” Lia said serenely. A few steps later she noticed Mar had stopped. She turned. Opened her mouth. For once, she didn’t seem to have words prepared. Mar stared at the house through the chain-link fence. The end of her search was in there.

Just her luck. The place was locked up, fenced off, clearly uninhabited, and condemned.

***

Why Lia had expected her to have a plan, Mar had no idea. She was just the human bloodhound here. Her job was technically done. 

Of course she was still helping Her Highness trespass, because it wasn’t like she was going to duck out at this point, and frankly she was annoyed at Lia’s assumption that she might. The regal disappointment and the hands on hips and the strategic streetlight backlighting that made her hair glow unsubtly around the edges were really unnecessary. As was the surprise that she and Mar were equally awkward at climbing tall fences. It wasn’t like Mar had lots of practice. At least Lia had the sense to take the climbing attempt around the back, out of view of the street.

“Of course I did,” Lia hissed as Mar gingerly reached for the back door’s handle. “I don’t _want_ us to get caught!”

“Like you couldn’t talk us out of it,” Mar muttered back. The door opened without issue, but creaked like hell. Damn it.

“If someone called the police I doubt I’d get the chance to _try_.”

Point.

“Not getting caught, then.” 

“That’s what I was _saying_ \--”

“Which _means_ being quiet.” Mar winced as the door creaked some more, shutting reluctantly behind them.

When she flicked her phone’s flashlight on, it cast a glaring light on Lia’s glaring face. 

“Yeah, yeah. This way.”

She stepped past Lia in the narrow hall, some paint flaking off onto her sleeve as she brushed the wall. The light played over the front door at the end of the hallway and she quickly tilted it down at the floor. The door looked boarded up, but. Just in case. And the door she was looking for was closer, tucked under the stairs.

“If he’s here…” Lia murmured behind her, already composed again, but physically tense. She was sticking close enough that Mar could feel that radiating off her. 

“We’re not surprising him,” Mar answered, with some regret. “Assuming he’s got the yeowu guseul on him, he’s downstairs.” And to illustrate her point, every floorboard creaked as she minced over to the basement door. Lia stifled a groan. “Look, this whole thing was your idea.”

“Should we even bother talking or just tackle him?”

Mar choked down a laugh at the image of Lia--slightly less immaculate now, courtesy of the fence, but still Lia--tackling someone. “Might as well try talking. The bead’s supposed to confer supernatural knowledge, not superpowers, so if he doesn’t respond well I can just--” She jerked her knee up demonstratively.

Lia did not seem particularly reassured. But none of their precautions turned out to be necessary. The man in the basement wouldn’t have reacted if they’d fallen down the stairs in a cloud of dust and spiders. Only when they approached him did he look up from where he’d curled up bonelessly against the stained back wall. There was no recognition there, but he didn’t seem surprised to see them. He sweated, shook, and croaked, “You can’t have it.”

Mar took her eyes off him long enough to sweep her phone light around the musty room. Just grime and bugs. She’d have loved to get away from both ASAP. She saw plenty of them in her own home. “Whatever’s making you look like that?” With the light back on the man she could see the excessive shadows bruising his face, the bloodshot tinge to his eyes, and the clumps of hair plastered to his forehead. Without all that, and with a shower, he might have been on the good-looking side for a white guy. Mar hoped so, for the sake of the kumiho’s standards, because she was beginning to have her suspicions about the situation. “I don’t think I want it.”

“Which pocket?” Lia stepped up beside her, eyeing the guy like he was a garbage bin she was going to have to rummage through.

Mar shook her head. “I can’t tell.”

The eyebrows went up. “You can’t?”

“He definitely has it, but I can’t pinpoint where it is. Which I think means,” she said, staring him down, “he and I have read similar stories lately.”

To her credit, Lia was only slow on the uptake when people were trying to get her to go away. “He _swallowed_ it?”

“For knowledge of heaven and earth. How’s that working out for you, buddy?” 

He had his eyes screwed shut and was snarling at her like a wounded animal. Or like a person too busy failing to process all the input in the world to think up a comeback.

“...This seems like an outcome that could’ve been predicted,” Lia commented.

“Shut up,” he growled. The tone was belied by his apparent inability to even stand on his own.

“So you know her,” Mar said flatly. “I’m guessing close friend or boyfriend, because she trusted you with her identity. Let me guess, you freaked the fuck out. Ran off before she could do anything you were afraid of. Big secret leads to breakup, yeah, okay. Then you decided the most powerful bit of her would be great to have for yourself. How am I doing so far?”

“My girlfriend could have been fucking feeding on me with fucking magic,” he spat. “What the fuck are you supposed to do, just go on--when someone’s pretending to be totally fucking normal and waiting to eat you--she could do that to you and you’d never know--”

That was nearly funny. “You’ve gained the power of superhuman knowledge and you still see someone _else_ as the backstabbing predator in this situation?”

“Are you still afraid she wants your heart? Liver? Whatever?” Lia cut in, a bit incredulously. “After she chose to tell you who she was?”

“Dude,” Mar agreed. “I don’t think she even wants to be in a room with you now. Plus she thought the whole kissing thing was _unethical_ , forget disembowelment--”

“ _I know_.”

He would, Mar supposed. And so did they, now, which she had to admit was nice. “Knowing seems to have done you a world of good.”

He shook even harder. “Ha fucking ha.” It probably made her a bad person, but her sympathies were not especially aroused.

“What,” she went on blithely, “too much information?”

“And if it’s only hurting you,” Lia said over the guy’s continued swearing, “why can’t we have the bead?”

He laughed at her. Mar felt an urge to stomp on his fingers. “You can’t get it out of me.” His face twisted. “ _I_ can’t get it out of me.”

Mar walked up and crouched in front of the guy, who didn’t even lean away. Just sneered. She hadn’t thought to ask his name, she realized. Well, it wasn’t super relevant. “I bet we know the one person who _can_ take a stolen yeowu guseul back. Right?”

She heard Lia take a sharp breath in behind her. “The sun was already setting--can we get back before visiting hours end?”

Once again, no idea why she was expected to know. “Ask Google,” she said, hauling the guy up by his collar, sighing as physical coordination fought for space in his overcrowded brain. He was taller than Mar, but most people were; he was just going to have to slouch. “I don’t have that setting.”

***

The kumiho’s head jerked up when Mar hustled through the door and shut it behind her. Her eyes went wide at the sight of guy-whose-name-Mar-still-didn’t-know. Mar wasn’t sure whether the face he was making was more disgusted sneer or terrified rictus, maybe with some shame thrown in, but he’d made it to the room on his own two feet, so he must have been more desperate to get rid of what he’d stolen than he was to be elsewhere. He looked even more of a melted-down mess under fluorescent lighting.

Mar checked the window in the door, covered it again. They had not made it back in time for visiting hours. Lia was distracting the waiting room staff.

“That’s him,” the kumiho said, voice muted and shocky. “Does--does he still have it?”

Mar grimaced. “Slight problem.”

***

A late-night hallway encounter:

“Did you have a good time?”

“ _Jesus_ , you are going to give me a heart attack, what are you--did I what?”

“Psh, you’re young and healthy. I saw you get in a car with that pretty girl from the other day…”

“...Oh my god.”

“And you were out a long time.”

“It’s like I moved back into my parents’ basement.”

“So, was it a nice night?”

“And my parents turned into busybody Polish ladies.”

“Did she need your help again?”

“’Night, Mrs. Ciszek.”

“Have you eaten dinner yet today?”

“Good _night_.”

***

Mar was surprised she got to sleep in the next morning. She was even more surprised not to have her Sunday interrupted at all; she kept expecting an impatient knock, and didn’t know what to do with herself when it didn’t come. She ended up cleaning her apartment for the first time in months. Two useful things accomplished in one weekend. If Mrs. Ciszek came by needing help with something, Mar almost thought she’d slam the door in her face just to restore balance.

Work the day after that was even weirder. Every single person who came into the shop during her shift had a legitimate reason to be there. 

She hadn’t thought she’d get away with so long a reprieve, but getting a woman’s life back in order after she’d dropped out of it for two months must have been taking up a lot of time and attention. As it was, she had five days’ grace before Lia Allister came knocking at her door.

All the wrinkles from their long and tiring Saturday evening were smoothed away. She was the most annoyingly put-together person Mar knew once again. And her smile was warm, but her eyebrows signaled that Mar was being judged. “May I?”

“Could I stop you?” 

When the door was shut (Mar checked the hall first for Mrs. Ciszek, who, thankfully, seemed to be minding her own business elsewhere), Lia mused, “When you said you’d go take out the trash, I didn’t expect you to never come back.”

God, the drama. “I also said ‘you handle the questions.’ I wasn’t sticking around for that.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Mar shifted. Lia let the silence sit. “...How’s Esther?”

“All right, considering.” Lia blew out a long breath. “Upset, often; some things are still fresh for her….Leaving town for a while.”

Mar could only imagine. “Ah.” 

“She wanted to thank you.”

“She already did.”

“And she doesn’t want to think about him ever again, but she would like to know you didn’t dump her ex in the river or anything.”

“Who do you people think I am?” Mar made a face. “I ditched him in a Starbucks with a phone charger and told him to stay the fuck away.” It wasn’t exactly satisfying. Alternatives were thin on the ground, though, since human memories weren’t as stealable as kumiho ones--which he, of all people, had been the most upset about. He seemed to have reversed course straight into wanting to forget as much as possible. Neither she nor Lia had been eager to involve law enforcement, but they would have done it if Esther had wanted to. Esther really, really hadn’t. 

Lia frowned. “Is that going to be enough?”

Mar shrugged. “I know who he is now. If he decides to come back, if I ever have a reason to look for him, I’ll be able to find him.” She had told him exactly that, adding, with her best customer service smile, _I have a knack for it_.

At least Esther hadn’t had to kiss that douchebag to get her yeowu guseul back. She’d just...put a hand on his throat, and there it was, like a pearl with a little supernova trapped inside it. Esther had shuddered as she clutched at it. Mar could have sworn she saw the flick of several ghost-tails over her shoulder, a flicker of yellow in her eye. Yet it had still definitely been just Esther. Mar had had to look away a moment later, it had felt so intrusive to watch. She remembered thinking her mom would have lost her delighted little mind at the sight.

Anyway.

Lia was doing that thing again. With the head tilt and the looking at Mar and smiling. Mar folded her arms. “What?”

“Nothing.” Lia slipped a folded piece of paper out of a pocket and handed it over. “Here.”

It was a check. 

“I researched standard rates. I did promise.” The smile was widening and it made Mar want to...spill pomegranate juice on that elegantly draped pale yellow sweater. Or something. “You forgot, didn’t you.”

The compensation promise hadn’t crossed her mind once in the last six days. “I thought you could owe me one.”

“I prefer not to owe favors until I know a person better. And anyway, it’s not all me; Esther insisted on contributing.” Lia smirked, angelically, somehow. “Do I need to stand here and watch you cash that to make sure you accept payment for your work?”

Not really. The check was for as much as Mar made in a week. She still felt cornered into pulling out her phone and opening the banking app, though, and she made sure Lia knew it. “Still not a detective service.”

“You could be, though.” Mar snorted as she scanned the check. Lia held up a hand. “I don’t say that because you’re useful. You enjoyed helping Esther.”

“Funnest night of my life,” Mar deadpanned. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time. Happy now?” She presented the _check accepted_ screen. “Good.”

Lia’s smile modulated into something uncomfortably serious and earnest. And then she reached out to touch Mar’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lia’s fingernails were, unsurprisingly, very neat next to Mar’s ragged ones. Mar withdrew her hand to shove her hair behind her ears. “Anything else?”

“Just this,” she said, recapturing Mar’s hand just long enough to press a little piece of cardstock into it, “since, I assume, you threw out the last one. And I didn’t mean, earlier, that you’re _not_ useful.” She tossed this last bit casually over her shoulder on her way to the door. And she gave Mar a little wave as she let herself out. “Just to be clear. I’ll be in touch.”

Mar stared at the door as it clicked shut. Then at the check abandoned on the kitchen counter. Then she looked down at the card in her hand, where the familiar type read _Lia Allister, developmental consultant_.

She looked back at the door. “...Shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have not written original fiction longer than one page double-spaced since...middle school? It probably shows. Mostly I am sorry for the title. Titles are hard.
> 
> All the kumiho stories referenced here are real folktales, which of course have variations but basically all posit that nine-tailed fox-spirit women are deceitful, manipulative, powerful, and flesh-eating. Also most of the sources are in Korean, which I cannot read, so I cannot provide citations besides “type ‘kumiho’ into Google” and “my mother’s version goes like this.” Also yes, “foxy” is primarily a negative term if you are Korean woman, of varying intensity--examples I have been given range from high-powered woman who gets what she wants to high-achieving nerd/teacher’s pet to mischievous teen girl to total bitch. (I assume context makes a difference, but I suck at parsing the context.) Also, you really can bring up the Wikipedia page for kumiho by typing in “bead knowledge/steal myth,” and yes, I went through far too many combinations to determine a plausible path to that result, and it took forever because I’m not Mar.
> 
> Theoretically this is the first part of a series! ...If I can come up with plots for the later parts! Pray for me!


End file.
